Lesson 13: Royal Icing Flowers

This lesson we learned to make flowers with royal icing.  Royal icing is really harder to get out of the piping bag than buttercream so my hand was a little more tired than usual after this lesson.  The cake was firstly covered with fondant then we created Lillies, Petunias and Ponsettias with leaf tip #67 using the Lily flower nail.  We were also taught how to pipe Morning Glory, Daffodil, Carnations and Chrysenthamuns (by far the trickiest).  I also finally learned the technique for Swirl Drop Flowers.  We did it on a hard surface like the table so it was easy to keep the tip steady on the table while we turned our wrist from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock position to create the swirl. Try doing that on a cake that has buttercream on top without messing up!

The flowers made from royal icing take 5 days to a week to dry and we assemble it onto the cake using royal icing to 'glue' it on.  We also learned to create decorations from royal icing; outlining a pattern and then flooding the inside.  That's how we made what I call the 'Wilton bird'.

Useful tips: Keep the tips of your piping bags filled with royal icing covered with a wet cloth to prevent crusting.